So at this point, I just want to get the operating system back, which was 10.3.9. So what can I do?

Have you tried resetting the nvram as Reboot suggested and at least tested your RAM sticks to the point of swapping them in one at a time? You seem reluctant to try the disk swap suggestion, and maybe you don't have ready access to another computer to do that.

XPostFacto changes something on the disk so it will boot from an OS X install disk that Apple says is not supported. People swear by it when it works; the rest swear at it. As Reboot said, there is a large section on troubleshooting on the XPostFacto support page. Many of the suggestions involve booting back into OS 9. Have you tried booting from your OS 9 or Mac OS X 10.3 install CDs by holding down the "C" key at startup? If that works, you might boot into OS 9 and try running XPostFacto to see if there is an Uninstall option in one of its menus. You might run Disk First Aid, and then try booting into the MAC OS X 10.3 install CD and run Disk Utility from that. Ultimately I think you need to do something that causes OS X to rewrite the boot block commands - did I hit that right, Reboot?

After doing that, you might try rebooting from the HD again. If it still doesn't work, I think you are ready for Michael's advice - reformat the drive and reinstall 10.3. If you have to reformat the drive, that would be the time to think about whether you still want to play around in OS 9 sometimes. You can create a small OS 9 standalone partition on your 60 GB HD. You can still install Classic on your 10.3 partition, or use the OS 9 partition for your Classic, but having a separate OS 9 partition would give you a place to start up from in an emergency like this, and it would allow you to set the extensions you want for standalone operation without having to change them to run Classic (if you have an alternative Classic installation on the OS X partition). I still have one on my OS 9-bootable G4 system from years ago, although I haven't booted into it for a long time, until last week to recall something for this thread. The whole OS 9 system, plus all the OS 9 applications that I was using when I transitioned to OS X easily fit onto a 3 - 4 GB partition, allowing "head-room" for virtual memory and data. (The actual footprint of the system plus all the applications is only 1.08 GB on the disk.)

Just some thoughts. Hope it helps.

_________________________Who serves his fellows, is of his fellows greatest - Chingachgook (by legend)Scout

How would I reformat the drive? Is there a command that I can type in to do this? I cant even get into the operating system at this point.

You reformat the drive using Disk Utility (located in the Applications/Utilities folder in a normal installation) while started under Mac OS X. That's a bit of a problem since you can't get the machine to start up, and there aren't many options with this particular model, especially lacking Firewire.

OK - so you've tried all the suggestions, resetting non-volatile RAM, tested your memory DIMMs, tried to boot without extensions, and tried to boot to open firmware. You don't have any CDs that boot. I think you may be down to your last option - take the drive to another Mac with an empty drive bay and parallel ATA connector, an external enclosure, or a naked drive adapter. Once you have it in another Mac, you can decide whether you want to try loading 10.4 as Reboot recommended, or just restore 10.3.

_________________________Who serves his fellows, is of his fellows greatest - Chingachgook (by legend)Scout

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